


apotheosis

by astrogeny



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, future past timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 16:59:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1557623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrogeny/pseuds/astrogeny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Naga never spoke to me," she confesses. It was so much easier to admit on the brink of death, if only to stop Noire’s tears and Kjelle’s resignation and most of all Cynthia’s prayers, high and desperate off the walls, full of more faith than Nah had ever really had at the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	apotheosis

**Author's Note:**

> kind of sort of nah/m!morgan, takes place in the future past timeline. i just really like the dualism of their relationship, and ofc i’m going to jump on the drama cd confirming that morgan survives the fall of grima. i figured that since lucina struck it down with the awakened falchion, it just went back into slumber like it does if chrom deals the final blow? so i figure morgan would have a residual connection with grima—correct me if i’m wrong there. i had frederick and donnel in mind for morgan and nah’s dads, respectively, b/c when am i not femrobin/fred trash.

Unfortunately for Tiki, Nah is possessed of a very small voice. When she speaks grandiloquence to the awestruck masses, she sounds to her own ears like a self-important child, parroting what wiser adults have said without understanding it for herself. She tries to add an ethereal, smoky air to her voice, the kind that Tiki had naturally, but when people hear it, they mistake it for simple tiredness and beseech her to rest properly. Nah thinks she’s begun to understand why Tiki slept so much, if only to escape the insistence of human curiosity.

  
Then again, she is half a creature of insistent curiosity herself, and that side is the one that brings her to the outskirts of Ylisstol, still half-wilderness. The Risen have been hunted down with the same systematic ruthlessness they once hunted humans, but the animals are hesitant to cede their newfound territory to a civilization struggling to expand out of a few last bastions. Cresting a hill, Nah wonders if Grima meant to kill the animals once the humans were gone, or if they were even worth its attention at all. The cottage atop the hill is old, the eras gone by marked in a series of patchwork repairs. A small stable has been added, recently and painstakingly. Around it, an unpainted fence stands at attention, and within the fence, a warhorse turns a lazy eye towards Nah’s approaching figure. She fixes it with her own eyes narrowed, one brow arched in what Yarne calls The Look, speaking the words capitalized in the same way that people call her The Voice. The horse evidently decides she does not matter one way or another and returns to grazing, Nah wonders just where the cottage’s inhabitant got it. She raps smartly on the door, once, twice, waits.

  
"Morgan?" From inside the cottage, something hits the floor with a clatter.

  
"I’m okay!" he calls, voice muffled, "So is the crockery! I hope." The door opens, Morgan’s hair is more tousled than when she saw him last, "Supposedly, it belonged to my father. He’d have my hide if I kept it in anything less than pristine condition." Nah does not ask how he knows the crockery belonged to a dead man, nor if Morgan ever even knew him in the first place. "Well, come on in," with a bow that is half a joke, half a courtesy. Nah almost feels like she should bob a curtsy until she considers how ridiculous it would look. Morgan is doggedly avoiding the dusky purple color of the Grimleal, opting instead for neutral tones on loose cloth, all save for the thick black glove over his left hand. He catches her catching herself staring at it, but makes no attempt to shy away.

  
"I’m just here to check up," she blurts, feeling more childish and less Voice-ish by the minute.

  
"On—on Grima?" Morgan chokes on the word, only a conscious effort preventing him from saying "Lord Grima" instead. Nah frowns, her ears going back—it’s a bad habit, one she should have long since broken.

  
"On you, I’ll have you know."

  
"The two are kind of part and parcel," he says, no sign of resentment in his voice. "If you’re the Voice of Naga, I’m the Voice of Grima, I suppose. More like the Ear That Listens Out for Grima, in truth, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well. Actually—do they still call you that?"

  
"Call me what?" Nah asks, still a bit peevish that he assumes he is no more than a duty to her, though she knows he has every reason to believe as much.

  
"The Voice of Naga. Or are you the Voice of Tiki now? Do they end the prayers in Tiki’s name in the churches these days?"

  
"Yes," with a heavy sigh, "And with my name, too. I feel like the butt of one big cosmic joke, having all Ylisse include a stupid name like ‘Nah’ in their prayers." Morgan laughs, clear and boyish. Nah feels her cheeks pink.

  
"Hey, maybe it means something in, in manakete-ese. Do manaketes even have a language?"

  
"I wouldn’t know." It comes out too clipped, Morgan’s smile falters as sunshine filters through the kitchen window. In the light, Nah notices for the first time the highlights of reddish-gold in the brown of his hair. Nah resists the urge to smooth down her own hair, always on the lookout for any stray curls that might have popped out from the confines of her braids. "That was cold," she says at last. "I’m sorry."

  
"Don’t be," Morgan reassures her, the good cheer in his voice is a touch dogged this time. "We all lost things to—to Grima." It’s the second time he’s slipped up, and he does not add an apology—it’s written in every word he says.

  
"You don’t have to say his name," Nah points out.

  
"His? Oh,  _his_.” Morgan mulls over it for a moment. “The funny thing is, I never really thought of it as a ‘he’. Or a ‘her’,” he rushes to add, presumably lest she assume he considered the thing in his mother’s body to be his mother for true, “I don’t think it ever cared about those little human niceties. It was just,” and he trails off, searching for the words to describe something yawning and eternal that Nah has only just begun to touch for herself in Tiki. “It was just what it was, so totally beyond the kinds of things we like to take for granted as being definite. Was Naga like that?” His eyes meet hers, and she understands then that he wants to be a sort of matched set, the wayward dark counterpart to her new, unwelcome role as a harbinger of light. He wants to know if she’s the one person in the world who feels as he’s felt. She hopes she is.

  
"Naga never spoke to me," she confesses. It was so much easier to admit on the brink of death, if only to stop Noire’s tears and Kjelle’s resignation and most of all Cynthia’s prayers, high and desperate off the walls, full of more faith than Nah had ever really had at the time. Morgan is quiet.

  
"I guess it’s my turn to apologize, then."

  
"It’s fine," Nah says. "Tiki—Lady Tiki, she speaks to me, sometimes."

  
"Do you mind if I ask what about? Are you even allowed to tell me?" He sounds so genuinely interested, a smile tugs at the corner of Nah’s lips unbidden.

  
"In truth, it’s more of me speaking to her, and her sometimes remembering to respond. She might have some benevolent wisdom, she might just want to tell me the stew I’m having looks especially good." She says the words with a tone somewhere between reverence and wryness, Morgan seems to find the notion tremendously funny. "Between the two of us, I think her priorities are in need of some realignment."

  
"Won’t she hear you say that?" They’re still standing just inside the threshold of the cottage, which suddenly feels much smaller than it really is.

  
"She pays attention when she wishes to, and not for much of anything else," Nah says, feeling for all the world as if she’s talking about a capricious child rather than a divine being. Cocking an ear, she dips back just a bit into the cosmic consciousness that was once merely a manakete named Tiki, now an abstraction built on well-concentrated faith and anchored to an earthly Voice. Nothing. In truth, Nah is a bit relieved—she can’t imagine what the apotheosis of everything humans consider "good" would think if she happened to tap into her Voice trying, maybe, to impress a boy.

  
"No dice?" Nah shakes her head. "Ah, maybe that’s for the better. I don’t know about you, but I think I could sure use a break from dragons, divine, fell, or otherwise."

  
"Oh?" trying not to sound disappointed, trying to act like she hasn’t just realized she may be as painful a sight to him as she is a welcome one. "Does that include me, then?"

  
"No!" Morgan exclaims quickly. "Big dragons," gesturing with his hands, "I could actually stand to see more of the littler ones. Maybe."

  
"Should I have Gerome bring Minerva around for tea?" she’s half-teasing him now, though in her opinion, Minerva was always a far more entertaining companion than Gerome. They were in solid agreement about eating misbehaving men being the best solution to any such problem, for one thing. To her surprise, Morgan smacks his forehead with the flat of his ungloved hand.

  
"Speaking of tea! I almost forgot," retreating into the kitchen without any further explanation. Nah follows him, noting his father’s crockery unbroken on the ground. A vase sits on the rough-hewn table, built for two but set for one. The flowers in it make Nah gasp, hands flying to her mouth.

  
"I hope that’s a good sign," Morgan says, proffering the vase to her like a bouquet. "When I got these, I got a lecture from Inigo about the art of flower-giving in the bargain."

  
"I hope you took every last word of it with a grain of salt," Nah replies archly, even as she takes the vase with unspoken tenderness, carefully avoiding brushing her fingers against his. She looks him right in the eyes. "These are incredibly rare."

  
"Are they?" with such poorly-feigned ignorance that it has to be deliberate.

  
"And sacred to Naga," she adds. "To Tiki."

  
"Well, that’s a happy coincidence, isn’t it! I found them along the trail, and I guess…. They’re an offering." People bring her veritable mountains of offerings—most in thanks, some in penance, others in hope. Nah wonders what Morgan is really giving her in this vase, its design a perfect match to the crockery still on the floor.

  
"I can bring the vase back to you," she offers, testing the waters.

  
"Don’t worry about it—it’s part of the gift. The offering, that is."

  
"You’re sure you’re not just giving a girl flowers, here?" Morgan shrugs sheepishly.

  
"I can give an offering to the Voice and flowers to a girl at the same time, right?"

  
"I’m still not sure what this has to do with tea."

  
"Since you’re here, would you mind having some with me?" with an open, earnest smile that Nah has to return.

  
"And what would you have done if I’d never shown up?" she asks.

  
"I’d have brought the flowers to you," he says easily, "With the tea to boot."

  
"I’ll take the tea," raising a hand to stop him from responding, "If, and only if, you promise to stop taking advice from Inigo. It shows."

  
"Do I at least get points for not using any puns?" a hint of mischief in his voice as he finally picks his father’s crockery off the floor.

That night, Nah puts the vase by her bedside and figures the altar will not miss having one less offering to adorn it.


End file.
